Guidelines for Research Paper Introduction

Yoshihiro Kanamori (kanamori<AT>cs.tsukuba.ac.jp)
Translated from a Japanese version, originally written for members in our computer graphics laboratory, with the help of Ken Jiang on June 13, 2014.

Introduction

I have summarized topics you should consider when you introduce a research paper using a power-point slide during lab seminars. The following also applies when you write your own research papers.

Stuffs you should describe in your slides

  1. Why did you decide to introduce this paper? What is related with your own research topic?
  2. Title, author(s), publication date, published conference or journal.
  3. What is the purpose of the research? What is the background for the research?
  4. Among the references therein, name a couple of papers that are the most related to the paper.
    Then, what are their relations and differences?
  5. What are the prerequisite and assumption for this research?
  6. What is the input?
  7. What is the output?
  8. What is the computational procedure?
  9. Why is the procedure used?
  10. What are the results? What is superior to previous works? Is the purpose stated earlier accomplished?
  11. Are there any limitations or future work?
  12. How do you reflect this research on your own research?

Other considerations

  1. Prepare your slide as early as possible, and ask for advices of senior members and/or your mentor.
  2. Try to make your explanation easy to follow so that your audience can deepen his/her understanding.
  3. If necessary, add explanations if details are not given in the paper.
    For instance, if it reads "We used method A for xx," try and look up method A for better discussion.
  4. Explain using as many figures in the paper as possible.
    You can understand the content of a research paper to some extent even if just picking up figures and their captions, because important parts are usually explained using figures.
  5. If there is a video explaining the paper on the author's web page, present it in your opening slide. If there are materials that will help the audience's understanding, use them aggressively.
  6. Font size must not be too small. Fonts equal to or smaller than 18 pt are unreadable when multiple slides are printed in one page.
  7. Add a caption for each figure.